Aesthetic Anvil

Except for its color, the cumulonimbus cloud in the top image looked very much like a real anvil as it billowed upward just before 5:30 PM on Memorial Day, Monday, May 28, 2012. This view looks SSE from Bowman Meadows, a new housing development under construction in Marion, Iowa, just south of Boyson Road and west of Alburnett Road. The anvil was part of a long line of storms that fired up in Eastern Iowa Monday afternoon, stretching from NE Missouri to southern Wisconsin. An arrow points to the storm cell in the bottom echo tops radar image (shown as a red rectangle), which at the time was reaching around 45,000 feet in altitude.